{"id":2894,"date":"2004-10-29T12:44:43","date_gmt":"2004-10-29T17:44:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/2894.html"},"modified":"2004-10-29T12:44:43","modified_gmt":"2004-10-29T17:44:43","slug":"al-qaqaa-is-the-tip-of-the-iceberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/al-qaqaa-is-the-tip-of-the-iceberg\/","title":{"rendered":"Al Qaqaa is the tip of the iceberg"},"content":{"rendered":"

Knight Ridder, which has been reporting on Iraq as well as any outlet in America, had an excellent item<\/a> today about missing weapons materials in the country — that go way beyond Al Qaqaa.<\/p>\n

Huge amounts of arms and ammunition were stolen from military sites, and there’s “ample evidence” that Iraqi insurgents are firing looted weapons at U.S. troops and using some of them in car bombs and improvised explosive devices, said a senior U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity. <\/p>\n

U.N. officials also are concerned about the disappearance of sensitive equipment and controlled materials that could be used to develop nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. <\/p>\n

“If this equipment is finding itself on the open market, then anybody with money can buy it,” said Dimitri Perricos, acting head of the U.N. Monitoring and Verification Commission (UNMOVIC), the U.N. weapons inspection agency. <\/p>\n

The CIA has convened a “mini taskforce” of experts to assess precisely what equipment is gone and what threat it could pose if it fell into the wrong hands, said two U.S. officials.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m glad they’re getting around to it now. The truth is, Al Qaqaa was a tragic mistake that puts American lives at risk, but it’s just one facility the Bush administration chose not to secure — and there are others.<\/p>\n

“That was one of numerous times when Iraqis warned us that ammo dumps and other places were being looted and we weren’t able to respond because we didn’t have anyone to send,” said a senior U.S. military officer who served in Iraq.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, once again, not enough troops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Knight Ridder, which has been reporting on Iraq as well as any outlet in America, had an excellent item today about missing weapons materials in the country — that go way beyond Al Qaqaa. Huge amounts of arms and ammunition were stolen from military sites, and there’s “ample evidence” that Iraqi insurgents are firing looted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2894\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}